History of Ideas

The late nineteenth century saw a re-examination of artistic creativity in response to questions surrounding the relation between human beings and ...

A GUARDIAN BEST HOLIDAY READ 2017Brilliant. One of those rare books that forces you to ask what the hell youre doing with your life. George Monbiot...

In the United States at the height of the Cold War, roughly between the end of World War II and the early 1980s, a new project of redefining ration...

A critical revaluation of the humanist tradition, Borrowed Light makes the case that the 20th century is the anticolonial century. The sparks of co...

In this first annotated edition of F. R. Leavis' famous critique of C. P. Snow's influential argument about 'the two cultures', Stefan Collini reap...

Like No Other: Exceptionalism and Nativism in Early Modern Japan probes the association of the early modern Japanese intellectual institution calle...

''Enthralling'' PHILIP PULLMAN''Such a hopeful book'' ELIZABETH DAY''GO BIG should be the rallying cry of progressives around the world'' RUTGER BR...

From the Sunday Times bestselling author, a dazzling, globe-spanning history of humankind's greatest invention: the city.'Brilliant...enchanting' E...

A Telegraph Book of the Year A remarkable, unprecedented account of the role of magic in cultures both ancient and modern -- from the first known h...

Chosen as a Book of the Year by The Times, Daily Telegraph, TLS, BBC History Magazine and Tablet'Compulsive, brilliantly clear and superbly well-wr...

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER This book is beautiful Julia Baird has been to the tough edges and giv...

VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.How do we choose between what is fair and just, and what our debtors demand of us? Yanis Varouf...

The notion that public intellectuals in the US are in decline has again become fashionable with their portrayal as trapped between Academe and the ...

Decades of violence and chaos have generated a political and intellectual hysteria-ranging from imperial atavism to paranoia about invading or hect...

The Mongol invasions in the first half of the thirteenth century led to profound and shattering changes to the historical trajectory of Islamic Wes...

Like No Other: Exceptionalism and Nativism in Early Modern Japan probes the association of the early modern Japanese intellectual institution calle...

Gary Cox guides us through 42 of the most misunderstood, misquoted, provocative and significant quotes in the history of philosophy providing a wit...

Anyone who has encountered costumed workers at a living history museum may well have wondered what their jobs are like, churning butter or firing m...

Since its founding in 1846 for the increase and diffusion of knowledge, the Smithsonian Institution has been an important feature of the American c...

A riveting, exemplary tale of the great cultural swerve known as the Renaissance.WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2012Almost six hundre...

Books That Changed the World tells the fascinating stories behind 50 books that, in ways great and small, have changed the course of human history....

Derided by the Right as dangerous and by the Left as spineless, Barack Obama puzzles observers. In Reading Obama, James T. Kloppenberg reveals the ...